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Sunday, August 28, 2016

In case you
missed it Team GB are now a world sporting superpower. Beating China
in the medal table, a country that has 20 times the population and a
state sponsored sporting programme. We also won medals in 19 sports,
a more diverse range of sports than the USA or China.

I was
surprised by the level of TV media and print media coverage. August
may be a slow news month but the headlines and top stories were
always Olympic stories. Why the media chose to prioritise the Olympics over war and economic crisis is a whole other article; but they deemed it important enough to be the headline news, and that impacts the national consciousness.

But now as the
summer fades into Autumn, and the next mention of Olympic stars will
probably be on Strictly Come Dancing or a voice over on BBC sports
personality of the year with elegiac music playing in the background; What will be the legacy?

Will sport
participation increase? Will TV coverage revert to its old favourite
of football, despite the fact we are truly terrible at football and
Sport England figures show more people participate in swimming,
athletics and cycling than football.

I saw the chairman of UK Sport, Rod Carr, on TV, he said

"We want to see a healthier nation that takes part in exercise. We've played our part in that. We need a collective effort."

The subtext here is that they delivered what was promised, now someone else needs to do something.

Yes, the lottery
funding has worked for elite sports and Olympic cycles. But has it
filtered down into the general population, are kids more active? And
are there more opportunities to participate in sport and activity
than before.

Since the last
Olympics, the Olympic athletics stadium is now a football ground, the
track where Jess Ennis trained in Sheffield has closed down. And I
know from personal experience that trying to get funding for a local
running track to have a better surface put on it is near on
impossible.

Has there been a
sudden rise in the number of 50 metre swimming pools or velodromes? The
answer is no.

There is a sport we are world leaders in, cycling. Apparently 2.5
million people take part in this per week ( and this doesn't include commuting ) and we dominate track and road cycling. Something that was
unthinkable 20 years ago. And yet, has there been a massive increase
in the building of cycle lanes, cycle paths, mountain bike courses,
BMX courses? The answer is no, no, no and no. Last time I looked
Denmark and the Netherlands put us to shame.

We are willing to spend billions on infrastructure projects like high
speed railways, road widening, congestion charges and even nuclear
power stations. But something that is a green form of transport and
good for your health. Nah, take your chances in the bus lane.

Rightly or wrongly, physical exercise is a big part of the
governments strategy for tackling obesity. (Many people argue there
is a lack of emphasis on nutrition, and as all the research shows for weightloss nutrition is more important than exercise).

As we know exercise is one of the greatest things you can do for all
aspects of health. But does the Olympics have a trickle
down effect?

We know there is no trickle down effect from football. A game that
is worth billions of pounds has not impacted the grass roots game.
Outside of the Premier League, clubs struggle. There is no
co-ordinated national programme. The Premier League is a business
showcase for international players and managers, but participation in
football is down and trumped by cycling.

More adults take part in cycling or swimming than football or golf. Source: Sport England.

A working class hero is something to be.

Sport participation in the poorest social groups is down according to Sport England data.

Let's face it, to take up rowing or show jumping you need access to
those facilities and there aren’t many fencing clubs on housing
estates.

Private schools tend to have running tracks, swimming pools, rugby
tours and more. Other schools had to sell their playing fields.

Even the Sport England figures for athletics are a bit misleading, as
they count road running and jogging as athletics, not only track and
field. I would be interested to see the figures for athletics if you
took out jogging and park runs. If a young girl wants to emulate Jess
Ennis or Katarina Johnson Thompson and practice these events, access may be
somewhat harder depending on your location in the country.

Some sports have always had traditional working class roots like
Boxing, and even middle distance running. But unlike Kenya or
Ethiopia we don’t have 10 people waiting to take Mo Farah's place,
as a nation our marathon times are slower than in the 1980s.

Running is essentially free, but there is something else at play,
something deeper.

Badminton is available at nearly every leisure centre, but it still
tends to be an ‘old persons’ activity.

Television.

The Olympics are great, you get to see all these sports that never
normally get shown. For example, the BMX was exciting, I personally
like weightlifting and had to find it on the red button.

BMX: Way more interesting to watch than cricket. Source: bmxnews.com

They still showed an inordinate amount of tennis and golf, which we
get to see all year round anyway, we won gold so you can’t
complain.

But once the Olympics is over, you will need to tune into Channel 4
at 7am on a Sunday to see anything different.

But there is a perceived wisdom in the media. The nightly news will
show football and cricket results and assume you know what they are
talking about. No need to explain the rules (and I still don’t
understand cricket even though we had to do it at school.). But show
some cycling and they are explaining yellow jerseys and stage wins
like we are dumbasses at home.

Mainstream TV really needs to start showing these sports, they could
buy the rights for pennies. We literally have hours of coverage of
snooker and darts, and I have nothing against this but with digital
channels, iplayer etc there is so much more scope.

Kids do what they see.

Some sports don’t translate well to TV, for example, squash. But I
can’t see badminton being any less compelling than tennis, and if
people watch golf and cricket for hours then surely anything is fair game.

Coaches, Paralympics, Weightlifting.

American Universities have state of the art facilities, tracks,
stadiums, pools and coaches. There is a high school system and a
college system that feeds basketball and football (NFL). The idea of
the coach is embedded in their system.

Fees at many UK universities are now comparable with US Universities,
but good luck seeing that reflected in facilities.

Now I'm not saying the American University system is perfect and we should be handing out scholarships to people just because they can play basketball. But there are lessons to be learned in terms of coaching and facilities.

The US system is used to having coaches at school and college level.
In our system there is a coaching void until you reach the high
level. Also note the level of foreign coaches at the highest level –
rowing – German coach, rugby – Australian, cycling – several
nationalities.

We still have an amateur approach to coaching at most levels. After
the last Olympics I expected there to be an explosion in coaching
opportunities, especially with athletics and weightlifting. There
wasn’t.

Weightlifting lost its funding because it hadn’t attracted enough
people to the sport. Despite an explosion in Olympic weightlifting in
gyms and crossfit facilities, there was no push to get younger people
into the sport, despite ready-made facilities and coaches good to
go. In Rio 2016 Colombia had more athletes competing in weightlifting
than us.

A few years ago a disabled gentlemen was interested in taking up some
athletics, I contacted several organisations about how he could start
and how to find a coach. All the organisations were very supportive
and there to 'facilitate' disabled sport but no one knew how I could
find the guy a coach or how someone would become a coach. After
seeing this page from Paralympics I hope the situation has changed,
http://paralympics.org.uk/get-into-sport

But disabled sport participation is down since 2012.

After The GB Women Gold in the Rio Hockey final, the importance of
their Strength and Conditioning coach was cited, and how the coach
was moving on to another sport. Surely we should be cultivating coaches at all levels
of sport?

Women in sport.

Everyone in leisure knows if you want some funding for a scheme, say
you are trying to get teenage girls involved in exercise, and a
cheque will be winging its way to you before you can say ‘zumba’.

The lack of participation of young girls in exercise is a worrying
trend.

And yet we have young black female sprinters winning medals in the
4x100m, and golds in female cycling and hockey players. How can we
convert this into more female participation in exercise?

Rio 2016 GB Female 4x100m team. Ask them how to get more girls involved in sport.

I know not everyone wants to be an elite sports person, and some girls may be put off by the idea of competing, but surely there is someway we can use the likes of Dina Asher-Smith and Daryll Neita and their coaches to galvanise girls to take part in sport. I note that Dina Asher-Smith is from my hometown and is also currently at Kings College University, surely she is a role model not some chump on reality TV?

Would more female sports on TV help? Our female hockey players and
female football players are more successful than their male
counterparts. Do we need to encourage more female coaches?

I see the GB Hockey team doing the rounds on TV, they are passionate about their sport and want more people to participate. It's a game involving a ball we actually won, the media need to take note.

Legacy reboot.

After London 2012 the legacy trail went cold. As someone in the
leisure industry there was no big investment, or campaign or
grassroots uptake of sports. There was no investment in facilities or
coaching.

The problem was no one was clear on what the legacy was meant to be.
Was it to create another successful Olympic games, in which case
success; cased closed. Or was it to increase sport participation, or
increase levels of activity and exercise, or was it to make a
healthier nation with less burden on the NHS? No one was sure.

We do know that exercise is as close to a magic bullet as there is for brain health and disease prevention. Survival rates from stroke and heart disease are way higher than in the 1970's mainly due to early medical intervention and drugs. When as everyone knows, prevention is cheaper and more effective.

We need to be clear on the goal. Who are we trying to attract?

The media will play its part, facilities will play its part and an
increase in coaches will play its part too.

Otherwise in four years time we will be having the same conversation. Four years of non mainstream sports being ignored, four more years of people asking what can be done about the burden on the NHS and peoples health.

Am I setting the bar too high? It's hard enough to get the most of the population to go for a walk and yet we are now an elite sporting nation. Is there a disconnect between the general population and the sporting elite?

What are your thoughts? What is the legacy? How do we get more people
active? Does it even matter to you?